Colin Todhunter Increased consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019. That is the finding of a new peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The findings are significant not only for Brazil but also for high income countries such as the U S, …
Kit Knightly We’re a week into this year’s UN climate summit, COP27, and the various agenda planned to roll out on the back of it are coming into focus. None more so than the autumn offensive in the establishment’s war on food. There’s a big push on that front. Today was “Adaptation and Agriculture” day …
Colin Todhunter A public interest litigation is currently before India’s Supreme Court which challenges the drive to commercialise the growing of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India. On 26 October 2022, however, the country’s apex regulatory body – the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee – sanctioned commercialisation of the crop. The central government has in the …
Colin Todhunter The article below was written the day before India’s state-run biotech regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), approved genetically modified (GM) mustard for commercial cultivation. This decision was taken on 26 October 2022. The regulatory clearance for GM mustard means the crop is fit for environmental release. However, the Supreme Court has …
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world. 1. “Stealth Omicron” is “the most transmissible yet” For those of you not keeping up with the Covid news, the latest variant just dropped. It’s …
Sylvia Shawcross Well, here we are—living in the New Abnormal in the first world nations trying to figure out what to do with those little plastic tabs they put on milk cartons without being wasteful because God knows that even though “they” say “they” recycle things who really believes “they” are going to recycle those …
Colin Todhunter In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for …
Sylvia Shawcross Now, as the crimes against humanity mount in a world on the precipice of colossal change, our hope lies in Artificial Intelligence. This is the way it will have to be I’m afraid because obviously Natural Intelligence has failed us miserably. I mean, look at the bloody great mess we’re all in all …
Kit Knightly Good news guys, UK companies will soon be free to start producing and selling several species of “edible insects” again. Apparently, one effect of Brexit is that the UK no longer belonged to the European Union’s “novel foods” programme, which approved many varieties of insects for human consumption. Because of this the farming …
Colin Todhunter Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most humans were engaged in agriculture. Our relationship with nature was immediate. Within just a few generations, however, for many people across the world, their link with the land has been severed. Food now arrives pre-packaged (often precooked), preserved with chemicals and contains harmful pesticides, micro-plastics, hormones and/or …
